Notice: Trying to get property 'display_name' of non-object in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/generators/schema/article.php on line 52
keyboard_arrow_uptop

There are many who have wailed in the press and on television, saying that
major league baseball will suffer catastrophic public reaction and possibly
be destroyed entirely if a labor action means there’s no baseball on
September 11th. Does baseball owe it to us to play on that day, and is it
appropriate for us to use the death of innocents to try and intervene in
labor negotiations?

No and absolutely not, in that order.

There’s an instinct to clutch at reassurance in the face of events larger
than ourselves. Baseball faces a unique burden here among national
entertainment of being the "national past time," even while people mock it
as being #2 to football. Baseball’s history was built on the commitment of
generations of fans, and the long season makes fandom a much deeper and
more personal experience than watching ten football games a year. Every day from
April to October, fans follow their team and their rivals and see players have
great nights and terrible ones. Our team’s fortunes accumulate slowly as a
background to the events in our own lives. That someone might seek to weave
the threads of baseball into larger events is understandable, but misguided
and wrong.

Baseball stopped play after the attacks, citing safety and respect. At the
time all I wanted was to go back to the ballpark and see forty thousand
Mariners fans with me in one place, singing the national anthem, cheering
our team, as part of a return to normal life. The same people who then said
the loss of life had made them realize that baseball and sports in general
were ultimately meaningless are many of the same people who now argue that
sports are meaningful enough that baseball must accommodate their grief
since doing so now suits their purposes. This is a crass betrayal of all
they briefly pretended they understood.

What would it accomplish for baseball players to not strike through
September 11th? Waiting to strike until the third week of September would
be seen as a spineless move–in fact one prominent columnist called a
end-of-September date "unacceptable in the shadow of 9/11" so delay helps
nothing. Insisting that no strike should carry through September 11th is a
choice for hollow symbolism over substance, and reinforces 9/11’s strange
position as a national disaster that requires constant revisiting. Should
no bad thing be allowed to happen anywhere around that day? What if the
players striking makes for a long term CBA and labor peace? Is that bad?

Should we commemorate the attacks? Should we commemorate the year’s
anniversary by rallying around each other to maintain our resolve, to
continue what will be a long and difficult conflict that already affects
our daily lives and the world? Or should we spend the day depressed,
watching CNN play only the moderately-disturbing video footage, pointedly
avoiding re-airing what I saw when I woke up to find my wife crying and
shaking that morning?

And in either case, how would baseball being on strike mean anything? If
you should be enlisting at the local Army recruiter, or if you think a
moment of silence and self-reflection is appropriate, how does not having
baseball played that day change things? How would having a strike affect
either of those, and why would it be an insult?

None of this obligates the owners and players to put aside their best
interests for purposes of national self-flagellation, any more than any of
us should be forced to work for free, make a donation to the ACLU, or turn
over our fellow citizens to the "enemy combatant" camps. There is no
connection between terrorist attacks and baseball, and baseball owes no
obligation to the terrorist attacks.

Baseball plays and has been on strike on August 24th, when the British
burned the Executive Mansion in 1814 as part of their larger and highly
successful Capitol-burning campaign. We play football if December 7th is a
game night, though for many years we remembered Pearl Harbor Day and
services were held at the Memorial in Hawaii… and never have I heard
someone say that we should break this union or that end that factory
lock-out because they’re not working that day.

We work, play sports, take vacations, strike throughout the year on days
then thousands more Americans died fighting their fellow man in our Civil
War in the 1860s – Grant’s drive on Richmond killed at least 61,000 of his
own soldiers between May and June, but we don’t give another thought to
heading to the beach, or watching the Expos play the Marlins in a pleasant,
meaningless game.

American history is filled with tragedy, and we persevere. The country has
wisely decided to largely ignore our greatest tragedies and defeats and
remain optimistic in choosing our remembrances. We celebrate our triumph of
independence, and our national anthem is a song of defiance in the face of
the British troops who marched up and down the Eastern Seaboard from 1812
until 1815.

Events of September 11th will be remembered, the brave honored, the victims
mourned, revenge exacted on the guilty. We should not cower before a date
on our calendars, until we are unable to think rationally, make decisions
on their own merits, or get on with our nation’s business. And that
includes the rights of free men to protect their livelihood.


Derek Zumsteg is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact him by
clicking here.

Thank you for reading

This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.

Subscribe now
You need to be logged in to comment. Login or Subscribe